Design, Engineer, Construct! kick-off in our London office

Lauren Costello16 September 2016

As part of the ‘adopt a school’ programme, we welcomed students from Cardinal Wiseman Secondary School to our London office, to learn about built environment careers.

Since September 2015, we have been supporting students and teachers as part of the Class of your Own Design, Engineer, Construct! (DEC!) curriculum. As part of this ‘adopt a school’ programme, we have embarked on our second year of sponsoring Cardinal Wiseman Secondary School in Ealing, West London. Creating opportunities for children and young people is one of the primary objectives of our community value corporate social responsibility pillar.

The DEC! qualification was created to help inspire the next generation to consider a career in construction and to address a serious shortage of young talent in the built environment industry. We will be supporting teachers and students at Cardinal Wiseman as they work their way through the accredited curriculum to a GCSE level this year. DEC! offers students the opportunity to develop a range of skills relevant to the built environment and construction industry and apply their academic knowledge to real life projects. While on the programme, students learn about the roles within a project team, sustainable design, architecture, planning, project management, procurement and BIM.

On 7 September, we kick-started the new academic year with a visit from the 19 pupils studying DEC! at Cardinal Wiseman and their teachers, to our office in London.

In the morning, the students were given a presentation via Skype from the founder of Class of your Own, Alison Watson on what they have to look forward to over the year and the benefits of getting stuck into DEC!. Following that, Matthew Brewis and Jainie Shah explained more about their journeys into the business via our apprentice and graduate routes. We then finished the morning with a presentation from Shaun Farrell, Associate Director in our technology division on BIM and Battersea Power Station which the students visited later that day. Closing remarks came from Paul Connolly, Managing Director of cost management.

In addition to our partnership with Cardinal Wiseman, we are also sponsoring the DEC curriculum in Marden High School, Newcastle.